It is time for a re-format, but I cannot get a handle on my C: drive. My system configurations are all default, these problems did not show up until recently. I upgraded from OEM original 98 to W98SE a couple weeks ago in an effort to alleviate some resource problems but was unsuccessful. I am running a four yr. old Packard Bell 233MHz with 4G primary drive and 13G secondary drive. I am unable to boot into DOS, and when I boot from a W98SE startup disk DOS does not recognize the fixed drives as being formatted properly. W98SE does see them as FAT32. I can access the drives from an MSDOS window opened from w98 with no problem, but unable to see them without opening Windows. When I run fdisk with the /status switch, it shows my primary drive the proper size as Drive 1, NON-DOS, with no label. It shows my secondary drive as Drive 2, NON-DOS, with no label. If it is possible to FAT32 an existing drive and label it properly using fdisk I was unable to figure it out. I am able to create and delete partitions with no problem. I considered deleting Drive 1, but I was afraid of getting stuck with no way to access the drive at all. I suppose I could install Windows on a new partition on C: drive. That seems like asking for more trouble to me, but maybe it is what I need to do? It seems there should be a way I can do this right.

Use a win98 boot disk, earlier dos bootdisk will not recognised Fat32 hdds...

Like I said in my original post, I am using a W98SE boot disk, except when I try to reboot into DOS from the "Shut-down" dialog in which case I use no disk at all.

Try the ROM-DOS 7.10 boot disk. It recognizes the FAT32 drives and LFNs: http://firststep.ahwww.com/dosware/rdos71bd.zip

Check out your system BIOS settings and setup for the disk drives. The fact you have an older machine with a primary drive of 4G and a second added drive that is 13G suggest that when the 13G drive was itstalled, there was a "Disk BIOS Extender" installed on the boot sector. These extenders handle bigger drives than the default system BIOS, by placing a custom boot record on the drives. A "normal" Windows or DOS boot diskette can not read some of these custom boot records, so you must use a special boot diskette that comes with the disk drive install package. Often the extended boot code has a provision for making such a diskette. Normally these these extended boot programs give you a message after the normal system POST code, but before Windows starts to boot, that allows you to get into its utility code and to pause and place a diskette into the machine and "boot" from the diskette with the special drivers loaded. When you have one of these disk BIOS extenders, you can not use the normal DOS or Windows boot diskettes to directly boot the system, as its code can not see the disk partitions correctly. You must either start the boot processes from the disk drive, pause it at the boot prompt (not the Windows prompts) and select the option to boot from a diskette. Normally these disk BIOS extenders are not needed on systems whose BIOS supports larger disk drives, but the extender code comes with the larger drive and many people ASSUME that it has to be installed. So boot into the BIOS Setup code on your system and see if it correctly ID's the drives and their total size. If so, you could use a Windows 98 boot diskette to clear the existing partitions, FDISK and FORMAT the drives. If BIOS does not see the second drive as a full 13G drive, then you must use the special disk BIOS extension software.

Thanx Jack, that makes sense but I am not sure if it applies to my case. My hard drive software does not give a provision for making a boot disk. They do give instructions on how to manually set up the BIOS to force Windows to use their driver when accessing the drive, but the settings they said to change were not editable on my system. I have been through one format in the past using this drive with no issues at all. It seems Windows and DOS do not play well together on my system. Whatever Windows did DOS could not see and vice versa. For instance, a partition deleted by Delpar would only affect what Windows could see, it would still exist as far as DOS was concerned and I was only able to create a minimum size partition like before with DOS. I deleted all partitions using fdisk, then I was able to create a full size partition but the O.S. was history and I was unable to re-install it. It would give me the setup screen and copy the files to the newly created C: drive properly, but as soon as it tried to re-boot into Windows to finalize it would not be able to find the drive. Trying to install on the second drive was unsuccessful as well. I finally was able to get an O.S. by unplugging my secondary H.D. so the configuration was original and using the O.E.M. version of Windows that came with the computer, but only by opting for their full install which gave me no options to bypass any of the O.E.M. b.s. it comes packaged with. After that I was able to install W98SE on top of it but I still have a massive clean-up project in front of me to get rid of all the O.E.M. 'options'. Using their 'Windows only' installation had the same issues as trying to install from DOS. The BIOS seem unchanged, I cannot figure out what is different. Whatever DOS version I have and Windows seem to sorta be talking the same language, now, though. I can boot into DOS and have access to the directories, but it sure would have been nice to be able to just erase and format a drive then install a new version of Windows there. I bought a 40G USB hard-drive to back up everything before I wiped out my secondary drive. Windows has no problem seeing all of that one, thank goodness. I just plugged in my secondary 13G fixed drive, and Windows/DOS now only sees it as 8G. If I format it with the utilities it shipped with, it creates a 13G partition that neither DOS or Windows recognizes. DOS reports, on the same screen, that I have a 13G partition on an 8G drive, but it only lets me create a 3G DOS partition. These same utilities worked fine before I re-formatted. If I delete all partitions and try to do it all with fdisk I am now only able to create an 8G partion but it is usable all around. It does appear, however, that I have not solved any problems really. Just shifted them around a little bit so I can function, but I fear they will come back to bite me unless I get this figured out.